Wednesday, May 30, 2012

it's heartwarming to note that SlowPokey is growing with me, day by day. there are a few categories added. and we are over 2,000-ish mark. so, to make it clearer, here are the descriptions for the Label:

Just Notes - anything worth mentioning about Slow-Pokey and me. Previously it was labeled as Musings.

Monday, May 28, 2012

the Plot:
Juliet Devereau (Hilary Swank), an emergency room surgeon, is apartment hunting in New York City after she separated from her longtime boyfriend, Jack (Lee Pace) due to his infidelity. After home-hunting, someone calls her to inform that an apartment is available and invites her to have a look.

Juliet went to look for the apartment and considered herself lucky for being able to rent an apartment from the owner, Max (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) for just $3,800 as it was large and affordable, but with the nearby subway causing noise and vibrations, occasionally even causing objects to fall off from the table.

During her first night staying at the apartment, someone is stalking Juliet, watching her undressed, took a bath, and applied lotion. While Juliet is asleep, she hears footsteps, and she thinks someone is in her apartment. She gets up to investigate. She finds her door closed, but unlocked. She finds a bagful of basic tools at her door, and she thinks Max just came to drop her a present.

The next day, Juliet and her co-worker, Syndey (Aunjanue Ellis), talk about Juliet's previous relationship with Jack, whom she caught having an affair with another woman in their bed. She can't stop thinking about him and neither can he stop thinking of her. Sydney suggests that she should find another guy, and persuades her to come with her to a party.

Later, Juliet thanks Max, her landlord and owner of the building, for sending her the flowers, but he admits that the gift was not from him, instead it was from his grandfather.

Juliet then thanks August (Christopher Lee), Max's grandfather whom also lives at the building. August explains that he wanted to put himself in her shoes, living with complete strangers. He then states that he doesn't get much company. Juliet feels uncomfortable and leaves.

Later, at a party, Juliet bumps into Max and starts to flirt with him by asking him to walk her home.

Max and Juliet spend time talking together while Jack is stalking her from across the street.

Juliet and Max get along on a good start, and, after being encouraged by Sydney, she decides to ask Max out on a date, at her apartment. The date goes well. When the date ends, Max leaves but Juliet quickly tells Max to wait and she kisses him passionately, and they start making out.

The movie quickly rewinds, revealing that it was Max that was stalking Juliet at night. One day, Max brings August to the hospital, Max sees Juliet and sees her name on her nametag. Then he sees a paper, saying Juliet is looking for an apartment. So, Max makes an anonymous phone call, saying there's a apartment that is not rented yet. Max planned for Juliet to live in this particular room since Max was renovating it. He built a peep-hole and a one-way mirror to stalk Juliet. It also shows that Max has also been stalking her while she is jogging or going/leaving work. He followed her at the party and made it seem that he and Juliet bumped into each other.

Back to the present: Juliet does not go through with the sex because she still has feelings for Jack. Juliet apologizes to Max. Max, upset and agitated, brushes it off and leaves Juliet's room. The next day, Juliet and Max discuss about the previous night and Juliet decides they should just be friends, and their relationship is landlord/tenant. Max is not ok with that.

Max has constructed secret corridors, peepholes, and a one-way mirror, and uses these to observe her in secret. Also, in her absence he secretly enters her apartment to touch her clothes, use her toothbrush, and lie in her bath and masturbate. He also hides under her bed and licks her fingers while she sleeps.

Max is frustrated about the fact that Jack and Juliet reconcile and have sex in the apartment. He observes this from one of his peepholes, and since this makes Max jealous, he sedates her after Jack leaves, and touches and later rapes her while she is unconscious.

Because his grandfather August, who also lives in the house, criticizes and puts him down, Max kills him. Max follows Jack after he finishes his date with Juliet.

Near a subway, he throws Jack from a flight of stairs outside and thus injuring him.

Back at home, Juliet wakes up disoriented and feels horrified as she repeatedly overslept since living at the apartment. She tells Sydney that maybe it's her apartment that caused her being overslept. Sydney suggests that Juliet gets a new alarm clock instead. Feeling that something is not right at the apartment, Juliet gets someone to install CCTV that records her apartment.

Later at night, Max attempts to rape Juliet again, but she groggily wakes up. Max quickly sedates her before she can actually get a good look at him, and flees. The next morning, she oversleeps again but as she scans around the room, she finds a sedate cap under her bed.

Jack texts Juliet telling her they can have dinner at her place at 7. Jack goes to her place to place some champagne bottles. As he enters the apartment, Max is in Juliet's room masturbating over Juliet's gown. Taking Jack by surprise, Max comes up behind Jack and kills him.

Juliet has her blood and urine analyzed, which shows the sedation. She quickly runs back home, leaving Jack a message warning him not to go to her apartment. She gets home and finds her gown on her bed, which wasn't there before she left.

Moreover, when she checks the security video, Juliet witnesses the rape. She doesn't get a perfect view of the rapist, but it was Max alright. as she shakily absorbs the truth, Max knocks open her apartment door and casually greets Juliet with a drugged wine that Jack brought, but Juliet evades drinking it as she suspected Max to put some drug in it.

Undaunted and determined, Max then tries to sedate her, but when he stabs her with the needle, Juliet stabs Max with a small kitchen knife.

The chasing ensues around the apartment. After Max emerges from the one way mirror in the toilet, Juliet finally realises that there are peepholes and secret hallways that Max uses to spy on her. Max keeps chasing her around in the hidden corridors, but she defends herself with his nail gun and in passing discovers Jack's bloodied body. After failing to make Max cease harming her, Juliet finally kills him.

the Riviu:
it's hard watching a film that depicts someone that you really like as the beastly antagonist. Jeffrey Dean Morgan got me from the first grin as Denny Duquette in Grey's Anatomy. and though he was a flop in the Watchmen, I like him still. as for the Losers ?, hell yeah.

but unfortunately, this movie doesn't gel well with me. first of all, i these days choose my battles wisely. and watching a thriller, i somewhat reserve myself from being too connected emotionally with the protagonists/victims. in this movie, i don't have to. instead i felt inclined to be emotionally attuned to JDM's perverted character, Max. let me tell you, even that falls flat.

i disagreed with some of the scenes:

- a doctor won't be to0 easy to sacrifice the communication factor. i mean, as an ER surgeon, you probably need great phone reception in case you'll be called for emergency. Our Dr Juliet with no hesitation whatsoever sacrificed hers. mula la bila emergency takde line nak mintak tolong!

- at first Juliet used the fridge to block Max from entering thru the kitchen door. yet when she escaped thru the kitchen wall, she the puny miss can break the door, instead of Max the burly Alpha Male, pelik kan? power lebih plak minah ni, the perks of jogging regularly kah?

- Juliet manages to physically bring Max down by kicks, punches and whatnots. don't you realise that the puny Juliet can take Max down, twice her size? that is magic, really :sarcastic: quite effeminating Max as in person. plus, i don't understand why she had to run away everytime she knocks MAx down. hello, finish the job ok! or is it the way for the film producers to prolong the chasing scenes? dah la the nail gun isn't actually a practically death-causing tool. cuba la meat cleaver ke apa ke, no wonder Max keeps coming back like a never ending nightmare.

- it is impossible to swallow the fact that not for once ever did that Juliet notices the visible movements of the bulky Max. i mean, he's behind every wall and practically under your bed, should have been easier to hear his breathing!

- when the toilet mirror breaks as Max attacks Juliet through it, not even one iota of the broken mirror hurt her. i mean, in real world, she must have at least be hurt by the glass shards and whatnots. but maybe that would be too horrendous, and thus nope, she's not hurt even in one bit.

- no plausible excuse is given to make us understand why Max is being the pervert he is. Except for the glimpse of the paper excerpt that his father killed his mother before committing a suicide, leaving him for years with his belittling, harsh, schizophrenic grandparent. adoi la. more reason please! that one only works for a teenager, not for grown Alpha Male who can just walk away and leave the house, hokay! this story is like a sinking Titanic times ten, too many waterholes.

last but not least, i feel the deal breaker was the fact that the movie doesn't pace itself well. i as one of the viewers felt that the plug was pulled so soon in revealing Max's true identity. perhaps the movie should linger on how good he is, his smiles oozing charms all the way back and more. but then the trailer had summed all the movie up. so... watch the trailer = watch the movie :)

Sunday, May 20, 2012

the Plot:
In Egypt, 1290 BC, high priest Imhotep (Arnold Vosloo) engages in an affair with Anck-su-Namun (Patricia Velasquez), the mistress of Pharaoh Seti I (Aharon Ipale).

When the Pharaoh discovers their tryst, Imhotep and Anck-su-Namun murder the monarch. Imhotep flees with his fellow Egyptian priests. Seti's guards, the Medjai then enter the room, to see only Ankh-sun-Amun and the dead pharaoh. Anck-su-Namun then kills herself, intending for Imhotep to resurrect her.

After Anck-su-Namun's burial, Imhotep breaks into her crypt and steals her corpse. He and his priests flee across the desert to Hamunaptra, the city of the dead, where they begin the resurrection ceremony. However, they are caught by Seti's guards before the ritual can be completed, and Anck-su-Namun's soul is sent back to the Underworld. For their sacrilege, Imhotep's priests are mummified alive, and Imhotep himself is forced to endure the curse of Hom Dai: his tongue is cut out, and he is buried alive with flesh-eating scarabs.

The ritual forces Imhotep to endure the agony of his wounds for all eternity. He is buried under high security, sealed away in a sarcophagus below a statue of the Egyptian god Anubis, and kept under strict surveillance by several generations of Medjai, for if Imhotep is ever released, the powers that made him immortal will allow him to unleash a wave of destruction and death upon the Earth.

In 1926, Cairo librarian and aspiring Egyptologist Evelyn Carnahan (Rachel Weisz) is presented with an intricate box and map by her bumbling older brother Jonathan (John Hannah), who says he found it in Thebes.

After the pair discover the map leads to Hamunaptra, Jonathan reveals he actually stole it from an American named Rick O'Connell (Brendan Fraser), who is currently in prison.

Rick tells them that he knows the location of the city because his unit of the French Foreign Legion reached the fabled city, only to be overrun by hostile Bedouins three years ago. He makes a deal with Evelyn to reveal the location of Hamunaptra, in exchange for Evelyn saving Rick from being hanged. And Evelyn closed that deal by promising the jail warden (Omid Djalili) 25% of the treasure worth, rumored to be kept at Hamanuptra.

Rick leads Evelyn and Jonathan's small expedition to the city, where the group encounters a band of American treasure hunters, Burns (Tuc Watkins), Daniels (Corey Johnson) and Henderson (Stephen Dunham), led by the famed British Egyptologist Dr. Allen Chamberlain (Jonathan Hyde) and guided by Beni Gabor (Kevin J. O'Connor), a cowardly former Legion soldier and former comrade of Rick, who had hidden himself in Hamunaptra during the Bedouins' attack.

Shortly after reaching Hamunaptra, both groups are attacked by the Medjai, led by a warrior named Ardeth Bay (Oded Fehr). Ardeth warns them of the evil buried in the city, but rather than heed his warning, the two expeditions continue to excavate in separate portions of the city.

Evelyn is looking for the Book of Amun-Ra, a solid gold book supposedly capable of taking life away, but unexpectedly comes across the remains of Imhotep instead.

The team of Americans, meanwhile, discover a box containing the black Book of the Dead, accompanied by canopic jars carrying Anck-su-Namun's preserved organs; Chamberlain takes the Book of the Dead while each of the Americans takes a jar as loot. Before opening the box, Chamberlain reads an engraving saying that any and all who open the box are cursed to mutilation of their flesh if Imhotep is awakened. The men ignore the warnings, but Beni refuses to assist them, and flees.

At night, Evelyn takes the Book of the Dead from the sleeping Chamberlain and reads a page aloud, accidentally awakening Imhotep.

The priest's resurrection awakens the camp and they search the pyramid for the cause of commotion.

Burns is found by Imhotep and his eyes and tongue are taken from him for Imhotep's use.

Although both groups return to Cairo, Imhotep eventually finds them with help from Beni, who bargained with Imhotep in exchange for fortune and his life. Imhotep finishes absorbing Burns and eventually absorbs Chamberlain and Henderson.

Rick, Evelyn, Jonathan, and Daniels head to the museum in search of clues to put Imhotep back to rest, only to find Ardeth speaking with the curator, Terrance Bey, who is also a Medjai. After Evelyn reveals that Imhotep referred to her as Anck-su-Namun at the pyramid, Ardeth and Terrance hypothesize that Imhotep is indeed seeking to resurrect his love once more and has chosen his sacrifice: Evelyn. Evelyn hypothesises that if the Book of the Dead brought Imhotep back to life, the Book of Amun-Ra can kill the high priest once again.

Shortly after discovering the location of the Book, Imhotep, now with an army of brainwashed slaves, corners the group, in the process absorbing Daniels and fully restoring his power. Evelyn agrees to accompany Imhotep if he spares the lives of the rest of the group. Rick reluctantly agrees to do so, only for Imhotep to go back on his word and order his slaves to kill them. Luckily, Ardeth discovers an entrance to the sewers and they escape. Terrance stays behind to hold off the horde of slaves to allow the rest to escape at the cost of his own life.

Imhotep, with Evelyn and Beni in tow, returns to Hamunaptra, pursued by Rick, Jonathan, and Ardeth.

Evelyn is rescued after an intense battle with Imhotep's mummified priests, and she reads from the Book of Amun-Ra. Imhotep becomes mortal, and Rick stabs him, forcing him into the River of Death. Rapidly decaying, Imhotep leaves the world of the living, vowing revenge with the same words he carved into his sarcophogus, Death is only the beginning. While taking his promised treasure from the pyramid, Beni accidentally sets off an ancient booby trap and is trapped by a swarm of flesh-eating scarabs as Hamunaptra begins to collapse into the sand. The heroes escape, although they lose the book of Amun Ra in the process, and ride off into the sunset on a pair of camels laden with treasure that Beni took earlier on.

the Riviu:
this movie is my cult movie back in the year 1999. the mix of Rick's machismo and Errol Flynnish attitude, Evie's sweet gumption and daring, Jonathan's comic timing and sheer good luck was the recipe that moves this movie into fan's heart.

Imhotep, the villain was antagonistic enough and though the legend of his power once resurrected was rumored to cause 10 plagues on Egypt, i was like disappointed to see that the plagues were quite limited. for example it is said that his power shall cover the whole Egypt into total darkness, still, the scene at the desert was done during a bright sunny day. and to think that his power only extends (or rather contained) to Egypt only, well, these people should just move out of Egypt. Settle masalah kan?

i much prefer the sequel "the Mummy Returns". that one is pure genius despite the CGI-ish look of the Scorpion King. but then, that's just me :)

4 star for this film, just because i love the chemistry shared by Rick, Evie and Jonathan. these 3 guys win my vote anytime of the day (^^,)v

the Plot:
Before Shrek (voiced by Mike Myers) and Donkey (voiced by Eddie Murphy) rescue Princess Fiona (voiced by Cameron Diaz) in the first film, desperate to lift their daughter's curse, King Harold (John Cleese) and Queen Lillian (Julie Andrews) meet with con artist Rumpelstiltskin (Walt Dohm), who wishes to become King of Far Far Away in exchange for helping them. But before the deal is contracted, the King and Queen learn that Fiona has been rescued. Rumpelstiltskin is then shown to have become washed up as a result and subsequently bitter towards Shrek for inadvertently ruining his plans.

In the present, Shrek has steadily grown tired of being a family man and celebrity among the local villagers, leading him to yearn for the days when he felt like a "real ogre". He takes his family to Far Far Away to celebrate his children's first birthday. Shrek gets annoyed when the three little pigs eat the kids' cake along with most of the other party food. A boy named Butterpants demands that Shrek roar. After he lets out a frustrated roar the entire crowd cheers, reinforcing his belief that no one considers him to be a true ogre. This coupled with the fact that the birthday cakes were decorated with a "cute" Ogre named "Sprinkles" finally makes Shrek snap and he smashes the new birthday cake in anger. He and Fiona argue outside about his reaction which ends with Shrek saying that he wished he had never rescued her.

After storming off, Shrek encounters Rumpelstiltskin. Rumpel, who had observed Shrek's angry outburst with Fiona, seizes his chance. He follows Shrek and arranges what appears to be an accident where he is trapped under his carriage. Shrek helps him and Rumpel being "grateful", gives Shrek a ride and a meal.

When Shrek voices his frustrations, Rumpel offers to give Shrek a day to live like a real ogre in exchange for a day from his childhood that he would not remember being erased. Shrek signs the contract and appears in a reality where he is still feared by villagers. He takes the opportunity to cause some light hearted mischief until he finds wanted posters for the ogress Fiona and his home deserted and desolate. He is kidnapped by witches and taken to Rumpelstiltskin, now the King of Far Far Away and possibly Emperor of a good deal more, which has become derelict and run down. Rumpelstiltskin uses ogres and some of Shrek's friends as slave labor.

Upon inquiry, Rumpelstiltskin reveals that the day he erased was the day that Shrek was born.

Therefore, Shrek never saved Fiona, never met Donkey, and consequently Rumpelstiltskin was able to get Harold and Lillian to sign their kingdom away, then cause them to disappear. When the day ends, Shrek will fade from existence. Shrek escapes Rumpelstiltskin's castle with Donkey.

Initially terrified of Shrek, Donkey decides to trust him after seeing Shrek cry over his lost past, something he had never seen an ogre do before. After Shrek explains the situation, Donkey helps him find a loophole: the contract will be nullified if Shrek and Fiona share true love's kiss. Shrek and Donkey first travel to the dragon's keep where Fiona was kept and find the place deserted. They soon encounter a band of ogres who are resisting Rumpelstiltskin.

The ogres are led by Fiona, who is still cursed after escaping from the tower where she was held captive, and keeps the retired and overweight Puss in Boots as a pet.

Shrek does everything he can to gain Fiona's love, but she is too busy preparing an ambush on Rumpelstiltskin. She is also bitterly cynical and disillusioned about the power of true love and throws herself into planning Rumpelstiltskin's capture. While sparring with her, Fiona begins to like Shrek, but stops short of kissing him. Shrek is discouraged, but Puss encourages him to continue pursuing Fiona.

During the ambush, the ogres are captured by the Pied Piper, though Shrek and Fiona managed to escape with the intervention of Puss and Donkey. Shrek insists Fiona kiss him, saying it will fix everything, but because Fiona does not truly love him it is ineffective. Upon hearing that Rumpelstiltskin is offering anything desired by the one who captures Shrek, Shrek surrenders himself in exchange for all the ogres being released. Fiona remains in custody because she is only an ogre by night (as Stiltskin himself points out).

Shrek and Fiona are to be fed to Dragon, but Donkey, Puss and the ogres raid Rumpelstiltskin's castle, allowing Shrek and Fiona to both subdue Dragon and capture Rumpelstiltskin.

As the sun rises, Shrek begins to fade from existence. But Fiona, having fallen in love with him, kisses him just before he disappears, thereby voiding the contract and restoring the world to just before Shrek originally lashed out at everyone. Shrek embraces his friends and family with a newfound appreciation for everything he has, truly living happily ever after.

the Riviu:
after over using all the fairy tales, left right front, and back for the 3rd Shrek movie installments, the fourth that is the Final Chapter of Shrek's happily ever after finally did it right, in a classic style as the first Shrek movie was.

the storyline is solid and believable. it was kinda sad really, that Shrek had to lose all that he hold dear: love, kids, friends, before he could really appreciate what he has.

but then things start to fall into their right places as Shrek struggled to nullify the contract, getting a true love kiss from Fiona with the help from his friends, the ever talkative Donkey and obese Puss.